Education, Technology, Outreach
and the One Laptop Per Child project

One Laptop Per Child
Education, Technology, Outreach
Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Presentation:
International Education in Early Childhood and
Associate Professor
Elementary Education (EED 721)
Information Systems Department
SFSU Main Campus
San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA 94132 USA
Creative commons license
http://creativecommons.org/

OLPC Mission: two videos
Principles and Child Empowerment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-M77C2ejTw
–
The XO Laptop, design for learning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMeX2D4AOjM
–

me

July 2007

Somebody is finally
thinking of the
children!

The Prophet
Children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you
cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
-kahlil gibran

A different generation...

School Galadima, Abuja City, Nigeria
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Galadima

Samkha village located in the suburbs of northern Thailand
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Thailand/Ban_Samkha

Khairat school is India's pilot site.
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ulaanbaatar

Ethopia
http://www.reactivated.net/weblog/archives/2008/10/olpc-ethiopia-updates/

Ghana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/2921143251/

Cameroon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/3110907018/in/set-72157611290673682/

Afghanistan
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Afghanistan

Colombia
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Colombia

Peru
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru

Rwanda
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rwanda

Iraq
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Iraq

Haiti
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Haiti

Solomon Islands
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands

Nepal
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nepal

Deployments worldwide
http://www.buzzmoo.com/?p=257

Deployments worldwide
... ...
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Property:Number_of_manufactured_laptops

school...to go

Collaboration
Activities
Journal

Collaboration

Activities
Write
●
A simple word processor
–
Chat
●
Similar to Google Talk
–
Browse
●
Firefox-based
–
Record
●
stills and video
–
More activities... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities

Journal

One forward, One right
An interesting way to
draw a circle in TurtleArt
One step forward,
wait for one second,
one degree to the right,
repeat 360 times
The wait allows you
to see the turtle draw
the circle slowly
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Turtle_Art

InfoSlicer
http://sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/InfoSlicer

E-Toys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zLAYgjx5J0

OLPC XO-1

XO-1 Board

Yo Yo Charger
http://www.potenco.com/products

Hand Crank Charger
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/Hand_Crank

Solar Panel
5 Watt/14Volt panel
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Product_News#Solar_Panels

Mesh Networking
Mesh does not require central hub-like
●
infrastructure
Wireless mesh works even when the computer
●
sleeps
Based on an early draft of IEEE 802.11s

FOSS: Free and Open Source
When the project started FOSS was the only
●
option that was flexible enough for this project
No vendor lock-in on formats
●
No royalties on redistribution
●
No discrimination based on fields of endeavor
●
Scalable global model for software and content
●

Languages
Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian,
Aymara, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa
Melayu, Basque, Bengali, Bengali (India),
Bislama, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese
(China), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese
(Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari,
Dutch, Dzongkha, English, English (South
African), English (US), Estonian, Filipino,
Finnish, French, French (Canada), Friulian,
Fula, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek,
Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian,
Icelandic, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, Kannada,
Khmer, Kinyarwanda, Korean, Kreyol,
Macedonian, Malayalam, Maltese, Marathi,
Marovo, Mongolian, Nauruan, Nepali,
Norwegian, Norwegian Bokmål,
Papiamento, Papua New Guinea Pidgin
(Tok Pisin), Pashto, Persian, Polish,
Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Punjabi,
Quechua, Romanian, Russian, Serbian,
Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian,
Tutorial:
Solomon Islands Pidgin, Sotho, Spanish,
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/452 Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Templates,
Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur,
Translate: Vietnamese, Walloon, Wolof, Yoruba,
pseudo L10n
https://dev.laptop.org/translate/
Approx. 90+ languages

Activities, Not Applications
There are no software applications. The laptop
●
focuses children around \"activities.\"
Activities are distinct from applications in their
●
focus —collaboration and expression
Abiword becomes Write
–
Firefox becomes Browse
–

Presence
Everyone has the potential for being both a
●
learner and a teacher.
Employs a mesh network that interconnects all
●
laptops within range.
Telepathy framework
–
Telepathy-gabble for using a Jabber server across the
●
Internet
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Telepathy_Gabble
–
Telepathy-salut for p2p/mesh collaboration
●
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Telepathy-salut
–

Tools of Expression
The laptop is a \"thing to think with\"
●
Principle of \"learning through doing\"
●
Constructivist learning
●
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Constructivism
–

A sidenote...
Remember seeing this in iLearn?
●
Interesting facts:
ilearn is based on Moodle. From Moodle's site:
Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites.
It is a world-wide, ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.

India

Resident artist!

Khairat school is India's pilot site.
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India

Khairat school is India's pilot site.
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India

Khairat Photos
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/sets/40064/

Bhagmalpur project
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bhagmalpur
Location:
●
Village: Bhagmalpur
●
District: Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh
●
Railway Station: Shahganj
●
Bus Stop: Banuwadeeh
●
School:
●
Classes: 1 to 8 class
●
Children: 1087
●
Teachers: 11
●
Internet: none
●
Computers: none
●

Under a tree model
Mesh “under a tree” model.
See slide 7 at http://wiki.laptop.org/images/a/a3/Country_Technical_Support.pdf

Bhagmalpur photos
Bhagmalpur School
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/sets/40063/
Bhagmalpur Village
http://www.zooomr.com/photos/sameerverma/sets/40075/

Electricity and Internet Access
Unreliable grid
●
Some times it works...
–
...mostly it doesn't
–
Limited electricity
●
Scheduled breaks
–
Battery inverters
–
Internet access is expensive
●
Offline Moodle and Wikislice will be very important
–
Offline content will be critical to the project's
–
success (currently an undersold point).

Language Diversity
India: 28 states and 7 union territories
●
The Constitution of India recognizes 22 languages
–
1. Assamese 9. Konkani 17. Sanskrit
2. Bengali 10. Maithili 18. Santhali
3. Bodo 11. Malayalam 19. Sindhi
4. Dogri 12. Manipuri 20. Tamil
5. Gujarati 13. Marathi 21. Telugu
6. Hindi 14. Nepali 22. Urdu
7. Kannada 15. Oriya
8. Kashmiri 16. Punjabi

Jamaica

OLPC Headquarters
1 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts

OLPC San Francisco Bay Area
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sf

OLPC-SF resident expert

OLPC-SF and SF State University

In the quad...

On the student union...

OLPC-SF at SFSU DTC

OLPC-SF and SF State University
Meets once a month at SFSU DTC.
●
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea
–
IMSA helps with organizing meetings, donation drives, translation jams
●
http://imsa.sfsu.edu/
–
Engineering student started OLPC SF XO Repair Center
●
See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SF_Repair
–
OLPC “course” on iLearn. Drop me a note to join: sverma@sfsu.edu
●
Internships?
●
Volunteers?
●
Course projects?
●
More...
●

How can you help?
Educators
●
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educators
–
Translators
●
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Localization
–
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/node/452
–
Developers
●
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer
–
Getting involved
●
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Getting_involved_in_OLPC
–
Sugar
●
http://sugarlabs.org
–

Contributor Program
OLPC Contributor Program is designed to get
●
you a XO laptop in exchange for contribution.
The info you will need for applying:
Project
●
Propose
●
Other contributors
●
Apply at:
Audience or impact
●
http://projectdb.olpc.at/
Brief description
●
Relevant experience & other projects
●
Contact information
●
# of XOs needed, and their use
●

Mailing lists
Educators
●
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/educators
–
Software Developers
●
General development
–
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
●
Sugar UI
–
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
●
All mailing lists are at http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/

Community lists
Everyone
●
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots
–
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
–
OLPC San Francisco
●
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sf
–

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
--mohandas k. gandhi

meritocracy rules!

This presentation is made with
OpenOffice.Org Impress.
Its your intellectual property. Keep it open.
You have a choice.
Vote with your fingers.
http://openoffice.org/